I put most of these pictures on FB already, but the story is pretty freaking funny that I have to share with words too. Last May, Nate did the Tough Mudder race. It looked really fun and ever since then I have been looking for something similar although cheaper and shorter. Then I got an email with a discount code for the LoziLu Women's Boston race. I looked into it and found out that it was at one of the local farms which happens to be the farm that we have a CSA at and I thought, "PERFECT". Because Nate's team was so big and it was so hard for them to stay together, I wanted to be part of a really small team. I asked some girls if they wanted to join me and a few of them said, "sure"... and I'm pretty sure most of them said, "sure" reluctantly. I have been swimming with the Masters group lately, and because our coach seems to give me soooooooooo much crap on pretty much a daily basis, she HAD to be on our team. I also asked another swimmer who is ultra competitive, Nicole. My idea of the team was "Aqua Divas" so I asked my surfer pals, Anna and Molly, as well. Anna fell off her bed two nights before and broke her coccyx (which is the funnest word to say) so she couldn't do the race with us. So Molly sucked it up and hung out with the nutty swimmer girls.
Nate came and took pictures and he took this picture of the entrance way:
At the start of the race, we all agreed that we were going to have fun, we were going to stay together and we weren't going to race.
I probably should back up and say that I'm not a big fan of mud. When I mountain bike, I avoid mud. I do everything in my power to not get muddy. Our first obstacle was through some mud pit and I was going to run on the edge of it, but my teammate, Molly, didn't really like that idea. She kindly grabbed my hand and pulled me right into the mud so notice in this first picture how much mud that I have on my shoes... Thank you, Molly!!!
and yes, when I run, I make funny faces because I can... and notice... the Aqua divas are wearing goggles which came in handy later in the day.
Nate didn't run the whole thing with us so between this picture and the next, we had quite a few obstacles. Crystie, the coach, must of said something to me, so I mooned her... and a whole group of ladies behind me started hooting and hollering... I wasn't looking for that result so I made the ladies run faster!! We had to go over and under some walls and go over some balance beams and go through some more mud and crawl through some ropes and what not.... But then we came up to the fun stuff. The first fun obstacle was basically a tiny pond. I yelled "Goggles On" and then I attempted to what I thought was shallow dive across the pond... Although from the pictures it looks like I squatted and then came up 2 feet away... So much for a shallow dive.
This is probably where the bickering began... Although it was fun bickering... We had all lined up and we put on our goggles again. The little girl in the red and yellow dress so "they look like they are ready. You should go on 3. Ready, 1... 2... 3..."
And then my teammates went...
But it didn't pay off to go first because I couldn't stop and I slid right into the rocks and mud at the bottom. It didn't feel all that good and I had a pretty nice scratch on my stomach the next morning.
And notice how dirty I am now with Nicole
Crystie and Molly who weren't as prepared when the little girl said, 'Go!'
After we ran back up the hill, we had one more obstacle and then we ran to the finish. As we were coming off the obstacle, I heard some ladies approaching from behind so I picked up the pace a bit... which my team took notice off and thought that I was racing to the finish. I waited until we were good enough ahead of the approaching ladies and I backed off a bit and told my teammates that I was NOT going to let someone beat us to the finish line. Yes, I still get crap for that. But notice in this last picture that I was not ahead of them and that we were running together.
Thank you, chicas, for running with me and dealing with my crazy competitiveness!!!
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